Fact of the day

Information is the most powerful weapon.

Monday

Fact N°
1595

The Whopper pre-dates the Big Mac by a decade.

The first McDonald's opened in 1940, although the company dates its origins to 1955 and the singular brilliance of Ray Kroc. It would be another 12 years before Pennsylvania-based owner/operator Jim Delligatti invented the Big Mac. Meanwhile, Burger King, which was founded in 1954, introduced the Whopper in 1957, an invention by James McLamore, one of two co-founders of the fast food giant.

Tuesday

Fact N°
1596

Celebrities who have had near-death experiences include Jane Seymour, Gary Busey and Ozzy Osbourne.

According to Jean Ritchie, author of Death's Door, Busey's came on the tail end of a 1988 motorcycle accident. Seymour's was brought on by an allergic reaction to penicillin. Ozzy's is described as a bike accident as well, although considering the devastating neurological effects of years of drug abuse, Ozzy might be more ripe for a near-life experience. Other celebs cited by Ritchie as having had these experiences include Sharon Stone, Tony Bennett and Rebecca de Mornay, among others.

Wednesday

Fact N°
1597

Subjects of some secret 1950s CIA experiments were kept on LSD for 77 days straight.

Some the CIA's dirtiest Cold War secrets -- highly classified, top-secret experiments ranging from germ warfare test-runs on U.S. cities to shocking mind control experiments -- first came to light in the very midst of the Cold War itself in the 1970s, when top-level authorities were hauled before Congress and asked to answer to a broad range of otherwise illegal activities. As part of the covert organization's attempts at mind control, prison inmates were given doses of acid (LSD) for 77 days straight -- an ordeal that seems inhuman. In exchange for their participation, some of those inmates were given heroin.

Thursday

Fact N°
1598

Hollywood's summer blockbuster era began in 1975.

All the elements we associate with a summer blockbuster movie can be found for the first time in Steven Spielberg's 1975 horror masterpiece Jaws: An action-driven narrative featuring cutting-edge special effects, geared toward young audiences out of school and designed to do nothing less than break records at the box office. The Omen played the role of blockbuster in 1976, followed by 1977's Star Wars.

Friday

Fact N°
1599

HBO was the first-ever satellite-based cable TV service.

By the time HBO was launched by Time Inc. in 1975, cable television had technically been around for decades. It began in the 1940s as a means of bringing television reception to regions where a home antenna just wasnâ€™t doing the trick. Community antenna television (CATV) was cable TV in its infancy, and it solved that reception problem by putting a tall tower at a high local elevation and using a coaxial cable to transmit the incoming TV signals to local subscribers. By virtue of that powerful community antenna, those subscribers wound up getting far more channels, on both the VHF and UHF signals, than the ordinary person with a home antenna.

Saturday

Fact N°
1600

Kool-Aid is the official soft drink of Nebraska.

Owned today by Kraft Foods, Kool-Aid began as one of a handful of products developed by early American entrepreneur Edwin Perkins in Hastings, Nebraska, in the 1920s. Perkins initially called the concentrated drink mix "Fruit Smack," and sold it in six flavors. Demand for it was so great that he dumped his other products and focused only on Kool-Aid.

Sunday

Fact N°
1601

The first successful wine-making region in America was in Ohio.

Although largely overshadowed today by California, Ohio earns the title as the first American region where grape cultivation was successful. In the 1820s, crops of Catawba grapes were planted in the Ohio River valley and quickly became an enormous industry: Within 20 years, they were making hundreds of thousands of gallons of wine each year and in another 20, the area would lead the nation in wine production.
This boom was slowed by the Civil War and crop diseases, although wine-making in Ohio today remains a $75 million industry.